Animal Care Community

New Wave Consulting provides a range of training opportunities specifically related to issues of pet loss and compassion fatigue, to those working within the Animal-Care Community. This includes veterinary hospitals and animal welfare organizations.

• Pet Loss: Promoting Understanding and Skill Development

  This one to two-day training will provide people working in the animal-care community the opportunity to deepen their understanding of pet loss and strengthen their supportive responses to people experiencing this form of loss.
  
  The first part of the training will discuss the broad and diverse ways in which clients experience pet loss. Factors such as anticipatory grief, euthanasia, accidental deaths, deaths caused by violence, natural deaths and losing animals in other ways will be explored including the impacts these losses have on families.  The first part of the training will also explore common reactions to the loss of an animal companion, important variables affecting people’s reactions and why pet loss is considered a form of disenfranchised grief.
  
  The second part of the training will be an opportunity for participants to gain tangible skills to support people who have experienced pet loss or are anticipating the loss of their animal companion. Research has shown that the loss of a pet can be devastating to an individual, especially when the person does not have access to a support system.  To mitigate this risk, this part of the training will discuss the importance of supporting grieving clients and the ways in which veterinary practices can do so while remaining within the boundaries of care. 
  
  Specific strategies on effective and empathic communication will be presented that can be taken by participants back to their practice, which can apply to veterinarians, veterinary technicians, receptionists and practice management. These strategies will focus on ways to communicate difficult news to clients including critical illness, death while in hospital care, as well as ways to support clients during and after euthanasia. 
  
  In addition, participants will be provided with concrete and meaningful methods on how to follow-up with clients who have lost a pet.  Participants will be provided with a current listing of local available pet loss resources to aid in making effective referrals.
  
  

• Compassion Fatigue: A Balancing Act
  
  Compassion Fatigue is more than a ‘buzz word’ in veterinary practice; it presents a real occupational hazard that must be better understood to ensure a balance between employees’ competing demands. 
  
  This two to three-hour interactive workshop will demystify common language used to describe compassion fatigue and will discuss factors contributing to compassion fatigue in veterinary practice.
  
  More specifically, the session will help participants understand the concepts of: Compassion Fatigue, Compassion Resiliency, Burnout and Vicarious Trauma.  By exploring the ‘costs of caring’, participants will better understand how our work in the animal-care profession can lead to personal and professional stressors as well as the phases that can lead to experiencing Compassion Fatigue.
  
  Participants will be encouraged to reflect on the effects compassion fatigue can have on their personal and professional lives through the use of an empirically researched self-test as well as interactive discussion.  
  
  The workshop will discuss how we can create ‘buffers’ for ourselves, to combat the impacts of our work and in turn create one’s resiliency.  Coping and healing mechanisms will be explored as well as a discussion about why both are necessary in managing compassion fatigue. 

• Transforming Compassion Fatigue to Compassion Resiliency
  
  This workshop is a follow-up to Compassion Fatigue; A Balancing Act. While the concepts surrounding compassion fatigue will be reviewed, the focus of this workshop is to explore a range of personal to professional methods that can be used to improve one’s resiliency to the emotional stressors of our work. Participants will be engaged in a variety of activities throughout this two to three hour workshop to help practice suggested methods for change.  Participants will leave the seminar with concrete and sustainable tools in order to promote a healthier work/life balance.
  

Please note that we do not provide counselling at this time.

New Wave Consulting will provide your organization with a free consultation to determine how it can help support your agency’s needs!

Please contact us for a quote. Please note that fees will differ depending on organizational needs, location and resources.